Stove is Buck FS21. Does it matter at all, as far as heat output, if the wood is loaded front to back orientation or side to side? The stove will except 11' logs front to back or 18" side to side. Most of my wood is cut at 16", but I have ran into a row that is in the 11" range when I started moving some. I could make a separate stack if it matters at all Can I fill this stove clear full? I noticed bogydave's picture where he had his stove stacked clear full. Would that effect the heat output when it gets real cold. So far just burning a few logs at a time Blow operation. Full speed, low speed or somewhere in between?
I don't know your stove. The difference in NS EW is how air flows through the logs during the burn. The more experience can give you real world info; I just started burning late last winter.
I haven't had much luck with side to side (E/W) fires, so I use the N/S method. I also do n/s on the bottom row, then e/w on top of that. Change things up a bit and see what you think. Sounds like you'd need to cut some wood down to size for N/S loads. My blower is on about 25% right now, and that's about as high as I run it most of the time. The idea is to just get a little convective current going around the house, not to blow out the windows. Again, try different speeds on different burns.
For sure you need to experiment with your new stove. Some stoves seem to like one direction better than the other so experiment and see which way your stove likes. It may also make a difference what kind of wood you are burning. As for loading up, I would not recommend it for this time of the year in your area. You'll be opening doors and windows for sure and you no doubt will not need that long of a fire. Most times we'll put 3 or 4 medium sized splits in maximum at this time of the year and won't fill the stove until we have some cold nights where we need heat all night long. In fact, last night it got down to 29. Before we went to bed we decided to not put wood in the stove as we had a fire earlier in the day. Got up this morning and house was not cold so glad we didn't put wood in. But, around noon today we did light another fire as it was getting cool. Probably won't have one again tonight then they tell us it is going to get really warm tomorrow.
Here is couple videos for you to check out, these are pretty good videos but you will probably find your own way for a firing up a Cold Stove and for reloading
If that's a secondary burn type then you need to leave a couple inches clear at the top of the load for the reburn action.
Some stoves say not to go higher than the firebrick so check your manual. I'll turn up the blower if I need more heat. But normally its on low.
Check out this thread from last year Stove Tetris | Firewood Hoarders Club What you want to do is pack your wood in there nice and tight for cold weather, long burns
I am going to ask here because I figure the answers will help the OP as well as me. How do you do an overnight burn? Do you fill the stove, let it burn hot and then shut it down? How do you know the stove will not overheat during the night? Of course I had the lower chimney stack last year but any time I tried to do an overnight burn last year I ended up with heavy soot on the glass and firebrick, which I thought meant it was burning dirty.
Thanks HDRock for the videos. We got rained out today, but did manage to bring 3 truck loads of wood up to the house. I will spend the day watching videos after setting a fire. 55 and very damp. Predicted to drop all day down to 39.
Looks like the unit is designed to be mainly an E-W loader so it should burn OK like that. If you end up with unburned wood in the box, you can try the old "tunnel of love." Load E-W but first, clear a N-S trench in the coals so that air can get to wood that's in the back of the load. Agreed, lighter woods may burn to the back of the box easier than loads of more dense woods like Oak. As Dennis said, you'll just have to experiment and see what works in your particular stove and chimney setup. I'd say that's generally what I've read on the forums...you have to burn in the load for some length of time to establish the burn. With your tube stove, it's probably more critical that you don't get too much of the load gassing, or the burn might get away from you. With the added 3' of stack, you'll have to see how things have changed and adjust accordingly...lower air setting, or what have you. I would burn smaller loads until you have a handle on how the stove is running with the added stack. When it gets cold out, and you are ready to load the box full, I would do that in the morning when you can watch the stove all day and see how it is working on a full load. In time, you should be able to load full at night and have a pretty good idea of what the load is going to do. Again, heed what Dennis says above...different woods will burn differently. Lighter woods like soft Maple will burn faster, and may require that you set the air lower.
Like others said you need to play around with your stove. I found last year in the cold nights that putting one split in the very back EW and the rest NS worked very well. As for the overnight burns you need to know your stove and know when to reduce the air to it. I have temperature alarms on mine to alert me at a certain stove top temp if things get to high. The dirty glass is a certainty when your burning at lower temps and longer burn times, does not necessarily mean your burning dirty, especially if you follow the wood seasoning rules laid out here.
More or less... about the only way my tube stoves would last the night (talking 8hrs here) is if they were packed full. If you haven't done that before then practice during the day when you are home first, you need to learn your stove by getting closer and closer to fully packed and learn the air settings and what it does. And realize the stove will generally draw harder when it's really cold out, so it's hard to get a feel for it in mild conditions in fall. But basically if you want to minimize the thing throwing out too much heat in a large load you need to figure out how soon you can turn the air down and by how much. The hotter you let it get before closing the air down the more it's going to start off gassing and reach higher peak temps. So to boil that down to one sentence... the goal is to figure out the lowest temperature you can turn the air down, and how low you can turn the air down too, without snuffing out the secondary combustion. On my tube stove I could fit more wood in if I loaded n/s. As far as burn rate it didn't seem to make much difference, but I could pack the stove much better n/s and also much easier going straight in without having to actually reach into the firbox to get the pieces in the back. However at your 11" max length would be inconvenient. I cut to 13" for my Jotul and Hearthstone stoves and even that was a pita. Those short pieces are really hard to make a stack out of, and they can't be stacked very tall or it gets tipsy. Almost double the amount of sawing, gas, etc, and can't carry as many pieces in your arms. N/S loading is much more practical if your stove will take more normal sized pieces that way.
